Preface
Why write about Solomon’s Song of Songs?
1 I love it 2 Lack of a really good literal historical interpretation 3 To help answer so many questions out there
I love it!! This may be an understatement to say the least. God has given me a delight that never ends. It makes me happy to do what I believe God wants me to do. I love writing about God, Jesus Christ, oneness, love and marriage.
2 Lack of literal historical views. Not boasting but making a point that I have 80 commentaries. Most allegorical views, the trio view and some good attempts at a literal historical view. I have tried to go further than most literal historical views. But since I don’t know Hebrew I lack in understanding of the original text. But I have endeavored to do my best in a literal historical view in hopes that someone smarter than me will do even better.
3 To answer so many questions. Why is the book in the first person? Solomon had so many wives what would he know about true love? What good is the book in my life? Plus, each text has so many interpretations. Look at 10 books and there are 20 interpretations or meanings of each verse. Who is talking?
My journey through the Love Song
1 How I first learned about the love poem? 2 Growing understanding of the text with advice 3 How it has affected me
1 How I first learned about Solomon’s song of songs. I have had many loving wise people disciple me over the years. One person in particular told me that I ought to find a Book in the Bible and understand every bit of it. Be able to read it know it through and through so that I may grow to be more like Christ Jesus! I trusted him and landed on Solomon’s Song of Songs because a puritan, with an allegorical view of it, said that it was a love letter from Jesus Christ to us and that I could have a closer more intimate relationship with Him by reading it. Nothing could have sounded better to me (FYI, I do not take an allegorical view of the Song).
After I had chosen Solomon’s Song of Songs to be the Book that I would endeavor to understand inside and out mainly because of how good it felt for me to read it and think about God, Jesus and love, I came across Jonathan Edwards (JE) testimony of when he would read it,
“I found no books so delightful to me, as those that treated of these subjects. Those words (Song of Solomon 2:1) used to be abundantly with me: “I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys.” The words seemed to me, sweetly to represent, the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ. And the whole book of Canticles (Song of Songs) used to be pleasant to me; and I used to be much in reading it, about that time. And found, from time to time, an inward sweetness, that used, as it were, to carry me away in my contemplation’s; in what I know not how to express otherwise, than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns off] this world; and a kind of vision, or fixed ideas and imaginations, of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapped and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of divine things, would often of a sudden as it were, kindle up a sweet burning in my heart; an ardor of my soul, that I know not how to express.”
Well, my heart seemed to be in full agreement with JE. The problem was that I would get too caught up in wanting to feel and experience the Love of God more than desire to please Him. Obedience and self-denial is more important than sweet delight meditations on the beauty of Jesus Christ. Yes, right beholding of the beauty and glory of God will transform you from one level of glory to another 2 Cor. 3:18 but convictions of what you ought to do come with you soul going from one level of beauty to another. If you don’t follow those convictions and obey then your in sin. Continue going “on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment.” Hebrews 10:26. Yes, there is time for such delightful sweet time with Jesus and communion with Him but obedience, self-denial and self sacrifice is better. In my experience with this Love Poem and talking to other’s that are addicted to it as well, we all tend to want the experience more than obeying those things we know we ought to do then are in sin. Then we want the experience again and again and still aren’t repenting and obeying. Stuck doubting your salvation, continuing in sin, not being sincere in prayer and becoming entangled with sin, being disciplined by God and not listening, and all the while still wanting more experience of what we call the Love of God.
2 Growing understanding of the text. Of all the theologians out there I love Jonathan Edwards (JE). In my life as a personal trainer and physical therapist I learned that if you wanted to be the best you have to learn from the best. Many people said that JE was the best theologian America has ever had. Therefore, I read everything JE had written about the Song of Songs. Along with Charles Spurgeon and some others. I couldn’t stop leaning, memorizing and meditating on the Song of Songs. It became sort of an obsession to the point where I would go a day or two without sleep just to prayerfully meditate through it. My heart would often race so fast that I couldn’t sleep. My heart was so caught up in the Love of God that He became greater and greater as my thoughts of the Source of this love went higher and ever sweetly higher.
I kept wondering why so many other Christian didn’t read this Book. And when I would talk to the professors or pastors about it they would say that the puritans had it wrong. It was not allegorical and that I shouldn’t see it that way. I would then read JE and the reasons for his interpretation and thought that if he had reasons then they must be right because he is the best theologian in America. So, I kept reading it allegorically and not with a literal historical view. Plus, I couldn’t get over the fact that I was growing in love so much. I learned later that it was not so much due to the truths in Solomon’s Song of Songs but was due to the way the puritans talked about Jesus and His Love for us and how great and awesome He is over and over again!!
Now don’t get me wrong. The Song of Songs will change you if you are saved, that is why it is part of the Cannon of Scripture. One of the qualifications is that it must change you to be more holy. It will do that! It is Scripture which is profitable for teaching you what love is, correcting wrong ideas of it, rebuking you when you know better and training you once you know and are acting in love to continue to love God and other’s 2 Tim. 3:16 with Song 8:6.
It wasn’t until one pastor get telling me over and over again that you can’t just take the places where it says, “Solomon” and put Jesus Christ there. It says Solomon it means the 3rd Messianic King of Israel who literally lived in the 10th century BCE. And that I should look at it in a literal historical context. And to stop abusing the text by seeing it as Jesus Christ and the Church becoming more and more one through their union and communion with each other. By now I had frustrated him and was testing his patience. I did not want to do that to a brother any more, which meant I had to ignore what my favorite theologian was saying about it and start looking at the Song in a literal historical context. This was so hard for me because I thought the delightful and oftentimes most convicting experiences would disappear. Little did I know that with a right view of the text the convictions got even stronger! Because Solomon was like Jesus Christ and you can see analogies and make comparisons and argue from the lesser christ Solomon to the Greater Christ Jesus and get a better view of Jesus!
I mean the way I see it the puritans were missing out. They would read the Song and talk about Jesus having the same love and desires for us when all along it was Solomon having a strong love and desire for Naamah and that the love of Jesus Christ to us, His Bride is infinitely stronger, self-sufficient and immense! Meaning the Song is about the mutual love of a man and woman so that if you put Jesus in place of Solomon you then get the view of a lesser lover. Yes, even talking about the love of a type of Jesus Christ, Solomon, will change you. Yet, the closer the truth communicated to the mind is to the Original, the greater the change from one level of glory to another 2 Cor. 3:18. We could behold the beauty of the glory of God in the face of Solomon as his wife did and it change us as it did her. A wife could behold the beauty and glory of Jesus Christ reflected in the actions of her husband and be transformed as well. But to behold the beauty and glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ reveals much more of Divinity thus “more” urge to love. “The more any doctrine, or institution, brings to light of the Spiritual World, the more will it urge to Love and Charity.” JE
Some advice. I strongly believe Solomon’s intent in writing the Love Poem is so that we could get a right view of what “love is” Song 8:6. Song 8:6-7 is the only place in the poem where Doctrine show up. Get this verse right! This key verse is so important that I have a whole chapter on it. What “love is” doesn’t change no matter what view you take of the Song of Songs. But how it is illustrated in the Song will change depending on your hermeneutic (way of Bible interpretation). Do you take a literal historical interpretation of Solomon and his first wife ( most that have a literal view do, yet I am convicted that it is about Solomon and Naamah) or a Literal historical view of Solomon the shepherd boy and girl (I believe this “trio” view is grossly wrong), allegorical of Christ and the church, allegorical of God and Israel, Allegorical of Jesus and Mary. I believe, marriage, illustrates the union and oneness of Christ Jesus and the Church Ephesians 5:25ff.
More advice to those interpreting the text. Pray. Repent of any sin your convicted of. Believe Jesus Christ died for you sin. Know that His righteousness is imputed to your account. Pray through the text following any convictions as you do for “Blessed are you who read and obey”. Read the Song a few times in one sitting. Read other versions. Then build a biography of Solomon by reading 1 Kings 1 particularly but read all of 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles 29:22, 2 Sam. 7:12ff with Song 1:1-4 and Song 3:11. Clearly Song 3:11 is literal historical narrative! Read Psalm 72. Are there any historical events that concur with the Love Song? Understand Song 8:6-7 then read the love poem again and again. Determine Solomon’s intent. Learn what the Bible says about marriage. Make an outline.
3 How it has affected me. If I am happy I meditate and get happier. If I’m down it lifts my soul to the heights of heavenly love. If I am lacking love in areas the holy words and Holy Spirit broaden my love. If my love lacks sincerity it burns away the hypocrisy. When I want a closer more intimate relationship with God I then swim in the infinite ocean of it’s depths.
One of the best things of all is that when I am longing for a clear view of Jesus Christ and an understanding of His Love to me I put myself in her shoes and think and feel what it would be like to be loved by someone who was like Jesus Christ then reason from the lesser Christ Solomon to the Greater Christ Jesus for a higher and better view of Jesus Christ who died for me and who I am one with positionally.
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